Date: Mon Jun 19 11:11:53 1995
From: Tom Blancato <tblancato-AT-envirolink.org>
Subject: hybridity and history


Fido,
 
Smothering is bad. I'm against it. Yes, the I/you shifters 
are operating in this exchange. But I don't think I have 
really seen a close discussion which operates that way. To 
talk, for example, of *my* or *your* being-in-the-world, 
while moving through Heideggerian language, in terms of our 
actual life circumstances, etc. The I/you shifters are 
operating in terms of Heidegger (proper name): *I* think 
*you're* wront in your characterization of Heidegger as a 
Nazi. This is a far cry from: I got up this morning, went 
outside, drove to town. I saw so and so, did this or that, 
had this experience. Now, Heidegger says X, but I find that 
X.1 is not adequately understood in Heidegger's progression. 
A mix of protocol and discussion, using one's own data. For 
example.
 
You wrote:  "Sometimes this is good; sometimes this is not 
good, as when one [you] gets delegated specific material 
authority". I don't understand this. Is the "you" a formal 
one, or is it meant to mean me, Tom? I hope there isn't any 
implicit mood of delegation here. I've been active in 
contributing and my post perhaps sparked the critical mass 
which motivated the development of this list. I don't mean 
to claim any material authority. I can, however, complain 
that my posts have not been dealt with substantively to my 
hearts (dis)content without this meaning I'm claiming 
authority (I'm not.) But perhaps I have your intention wrong 
here.
 
In most creative and interactive situations I've dealt with 
(project design, "activism", and so forth), I've found that 
it is helpful to think in terms of "organizing principles." 
History is the cheif organizing principle. I think it is 
overused. I am not hystericalizing: use it, but I say, don't 
use it too much. You're points about the spoon history, Kent 
Palmer's stuff, etc., are all fine by me. But don't think 
that history has served up the perfect dish of 
experimentation. Anyways, I read off according to these 
priciples, to put it roughly:  history, crisis, polemos, 
immediate action agenda, possibility, negation, 
hystericalization.
 
At a political activism place I was working at, I brought up 
a very fundamental question, relating to a decision made 
twenty years before, and was told: "You weren't in on that 
discussion". Such is the way that people capitalize on 
history. I think the same principle can be thought of in 
terms of the consensus developed concerning "length". Your 
movement of "generalization" has me suspicious: "It can be 
generalized...". Is it generalization or is it 
hystericalization? I don't mean to flame at all and hope you 
will take this in the spirit intended. Nor do I mean to 
dismiss the phenomenological data you bring up by any means. 
You're going too far with me.
 
The question of what this list is (schizo?): I don't quite 
understand what you mean. It's indecision between "really 
possible proposals" and the "wooly" (quest que c'est?) is 
its founding tension, I think. I still say (but offer no 
directive): change the name of this list while there's still 
time, before the consensus of *history* does it's work! 
Change it to: lists proposals and philosophy (listpropphil-
L) or something like that. 
 
Your discomfort with hyphens and hybrids suggests a general 
theme, by the way, concerning hyrbridity and the political. 
The political moments in this list concerning pro-position, 
founding, establishing, and so forth, are all very 
interesting to me. The basic paradigm, from a certain 
practical standpoint, concerning hybridity, for me, is that 
you are in a play between demands of an economy of 
"scanning", immediacy, etc., and, minimally, other things. 
So, for example, to call a working "theory", or to call it 
"action", invokes, within the junctures and swithc points 
this economy, in certain ways. At the same time, it 
restricts and maintains the much bemoanded theorty/action 
distinction. Yet: when one posits theoryaction, or 
thoughtaction, as I often put it, a certain demand is left 
unsatisfied: People want the mis en scene to be immediately 
invoked, delimited, so that they can get to the objects of 
desire, and so forth. The business of the disruption that 
occurs when the hybrid happens, how it either does or 
doesn't succeed in opening up a potentially better mis en 
scene, how people either do or don't accept this, is all 
grist for the mill, for me, for the thinking of 
thoughtaction in its meta-static progress in its founding 
conditions. I find the logics here delicious, by the way. 
 
But whatever.
 
Regards,
 
Tom

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"It is only after one ceases to reduce public affairs to the business of 
dominion that the original data in the realm of human affairs will appear, or, 
rather, reappear, in their authentic diversity."  -- Hannah Arendt

Crises of the Republic; lying in politics, civil disobedience on violence, 
thoughts on politics, and revolution. Hannah Arendt [1st ed.] New York, 
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich [1972] pages 142-143

Tom Blancato
tblancato-AT-envirolink.org
Eyes on Violence (nonviolence and human rights monitoring in Haiti)
Thoughtaction Collective (reparative justice project)
521 Main Street
PO Box 495
Harmony PA 16037
412-453-0211



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